


Worth it for the view

by chocolatekettle



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, post-Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-14
Updated: 2011-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatekettle/pseuds/chocolatekettle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie and Jack, afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth it for the view

**Author's Note:**

> This used to be a snippet of what was meant to be a much longer piece about Jack and Janet and the backstory I am convinced they had, but it never got further. What you need to know for this to make sense is that in my personal head canon, Janet met Jack long before the Stargate and she was a lady who could drink most of the 6foot plus airmen she knew under the table despite being half their size, and in her younger and wilder days she frequently did.
> 
> The title comes from Bell X1's 'In Every Sunflower'.

  
_We're still watching  
Your rainbow through the shower  
And we still see you  
In every sunflower_

 _I wouldn't swap the pain  
For never knowing you  
I wouldn't swap the pain  
Cause it was worth it for the view_

 __Jack gets out of the mountain as soon as he decently can: away from the funeral atmosphere; away from the goddamn alien technology that has them all in thrall and brings nothing but trouble; away, briefly, from the service that has cost him too many friends, one way or another.  He's vaguely aware that Carter is holding a wake of sorts and that he should probably make an appearance for an hour or so.  He goes home instead, digs out a half-empty bottle of whiskey and sits out on the deck, thinking about how the first half had been shared, and waiting.

An hour later, he hears a car pull up and Cassie appears around the corner of the house.

"Too many people," she says simply, and Jack grimaces understandingly.  He remembers all too well the suffocating, well-meant sympathy.

"Sam know you're here?"

Cassie nods, and he lifts his arm as she slides onto the bench beside him and lets her curl up against his side.  Her weight against his ribs is just shy of painful, but she's been too grown up to sit like this for a long time and the fact that she's doing it now tells him that she needs it.  If he's honest with himself, he needs it too.  He wants the comfort of contact, and he needs to know for sure that she doesn't blame him.

"She was important, Cassie," he offers.  "To a lot of people, not just to us."

"I know." Cassie sighs.  "I know, it's just...they all know her as a doctor.  And they're telling stories about what a brilliant doctor she was and that's fine, that's great, but it's not all she was."

Jack huffs a laugh and nods agreement and thinks _oh, Cassie, the stories I could tell._

"Jack," she says, and there it is, the catch in her voice that tells him that the shock is wearing off, now, and reality is sinking in.  "Jack, I don't know what to do."

He shuts his eyes and swallows hard against the lump in his throat.  "I don't know either, Cass.  But we'll figure it out, ok?  We'll get there."

He sets his glass down, puts both arms round her and mutters soft, nonsense comfort into her hair, and maybe cries a little himself, because he would have done anything to never have to watch her go through this again.  She cries herself out, eventually, and sits up a little, and he waits for her to break the silence.

"You're drinking Mom's whiskey," she says, after a while.  "You never drink whiskey except with her."

"Yup."  Jack picks the glass up again and tilts it to watch the swirl of liquid.  Cassie hadn't asked, exactly, but he tells her anyway.  "We go way back, me and your mom and this whiskey."

"She never told me," Cassie starts, and then corrects herself.  "No. I never asked."  She brings her feet up under her and hugs her knees.  "There are a lot of things I never got to ask."

Jack glances at her, worried, but she says it with the same calm, desolate dignity with which she had taken the folded flag earlier in the day, with which she had accepted, six years ago, that everything she knew had changed, and for a moment all Jack can see is that lost, heartbroken child, and he tightens his arm instinctively around her.

He doesn't know much about Cassie's birth parents.  She's never talked about them much, at least not to him, and he's never asked because his role in her life has been that of ally, protector, playmate, not confidante or counsellor.  He remembers the eleven year girl she was, and thinks they must have been good people to raise such a child.  He looks at the young woman she's grown into over the six years she spent with Janet, and thinks that no one could have been a better mother.

The whiskey tastes like Germany and Colorado; like Daniel's absence and Cromwell's death and a hundred moments of friendship and support and care that were never taken for granted and never properly appreciated.

He won't get drunk, because she'd never approved of that as a method of blocking out grief, but he'll sit here for a while with her daughter and think about her, and talk about her if that's what Cassie needs, and drink his whiskey straight.


End file.
